For the last five years, I have been working on a BSEE after my
midlife layoff. The schoolwork forced me to change my
priorities
and allocate time cautiously. But everything has changed within
the last few weeks so it is time again to assess where things
stand. The Sven
issue erupted again when someone mistakenly
deleted his alioth account without any notification. A simple
mistake was made but Sven escalated it into a flamefest with
his typical diatribes. I contributed to this mess with a
single
post suggesting that there might be rhetorical
questions we should consider.

I now have time to reflect on these issues and their meaning. I
have been proud of the Debian project even though my time was
allocated elsewhere and I could not contribute as much as I
wanted. The few hours I could spend every week quickly got
consumed on mailing list traffic and debian-private flamewars.
I did participate through private email exchanges but my actual
list responses were more subdued. The Debian folk enjoy a good
debate. But some alpha geeks refuse to yield a nanometer. They
cherish the 'last post wins' philosophy. It seems as if Sven
subscribed to this mindset. He obviously felt compelled to
challenge and reply to almost all the messages about the topics
involving him. With over 1000 developers, it is expected that
few of us will post on any particular topic. If a significant
percentage of us do participate, the list gets flooded and our
individual mailboxes quickly fill up. This becomes a problem
for someone like me who actually reads the content of messages.
I feel it is my duty to read everything posted to debian-private
out of respect for my fellow developers. So if
5% to 10% of my
peers express a thought and Sven feels compelled to respond to
most of them, it quickly spirals out of hand. It is even worse
when other DDs share the need to get the last word.

This annoying habit of Sven was not limited to the private
discussion list for DDs. He also flooded public lists with his
dogmatic claims. He was quick to list how many DDs opposed his
expulsion request. The Debian community is full of fair minded
people who recognize there was plenty of blame to go around.
It should not be surprising that a number of DDs wanted to make
sure this issue was handled properly. Could a DD be expelled
for words alone? Was the timing appropriate? There were a lot
of questions worthy of consideration. While the entire
community is free to debate these issues, the actual decision
rested with the Debian Account Managers. A
guideline had been
posted to describe this process, but the DAMs are free to use
their own discretion. The Debian project likes to work through
consensus, but this type of issue is too divisive. There are
too many value systems represented in this international
community to establish a consensus for dealing with Sven.

After deliberation, the DAMs decision was announced and Sven
sought to make it public. This warning was ignored and treated
as more fuel to the fire as Sven added the DAMs to the list of
people whom he blamed for his predicament. The Ad Hominem
attacks continued and baseless assertions resumed with new
people added to his list. This situation finally came to a
head as Frans Pop
retired from the Debian project. It has been
very disruptive to Debian while this 'pissing contest'
progressed. I have exchanged private email with both Frans
and Sven about the issues. Neither side was lily white in
their conduct from my perspective. I tried to keep most of my
concerns and observations off the mailing lists but I did post
public responses a few times. It is finally time for a
summation of my thoughts for anyone who might care to read them.

I can understand how it was no longer fun dealing with Debian
issues. While I may have written criticisms about this 'pissing
contest', I actually admire how Frans thought about the welfare
of Debian. It is unfortunate that a criticism may sting more
than the praise of a good decision. I hope my views about
accountability and 'pissing contests' were not taken personally
as harsh judgements. I try to express my views with the hope
that it will serve as a data point about perceptions. I can
offer my perception and then it is up to the reader to decide
if they find any value in it. The response from Sven has
convinced me that he treats such inputs as worthless. I suspect
he will only cherish a view that coincides with his conclusions.
I have no desire to be listed as a person agreeing with the
claims Sven rehashed regularly. While I wanted Sven to get a
fair shake, I found it difficult to understand him. He would
claim things and make assertions that he did not justify. I
would question him about things I did not understand and his
response would leave me unsatisfied. I finally reached a
conclusion that he had a different definition for words that
I thought were common. I could follow his logic if I knew to
substitute his meanings instead of online dictionary
definitions.
This burden was not worth my time. I expect that Sven will add
me to his list of enemies because I am unwilling to accept that
burden. He has already made various accusations because I dared
point out these differences.

I do not want to say Sven is an evil person or he does
hateful
things, but he refuses to acknowledge we have a right to our own
views. In isolation, he makes statements about him
admitting to making mistakes and glorifies his calls for
conciliation. But he fails
to see how the rest of his behaviour belies these statements.
When all else fails, he falls back on the excuse that English is
not his native tongue. I am not willing to excuse his
behaviour.
I have repeatedly made attempts to explain what is going on. He
chooses to turn a blind eye as if he expects me to mold to his
will. He obviously has not learned from his attempts to force
the Debian project to conform. I am sure he explains himself
much better in his native tongue. It would make sense that
French DDs plead for leniency in dealing with him. But I speak
English and I do not have enough time to parse everything he
writes using his distinct definitions. He can assert anything
he wants but I find it easier to just reject his claims instead
of wasting lots of time seeking the nuanced conditions and
loopholes that make him seem reasonable. I was not put on this
planet to blindly accept his standards. It seems like there are
a lot of other DDs who understand this view. I think they share
my genuine hope that Sven will find happiness elsewhere. He
causes more damage than he is worth from a Debian perspective.
It is now time for me to cut my loss and wash my hands of this
affair.

So why would I post this information to this blog? Because I
need to move on. For the last few years I have tried to
contribute to Debian with miniscule amounts of time available.
A public post here or there, more significant private exchanges
with Sven and others, and extensive reading of DDs viewpoints
have left me with these conclusions. Now I have more time to
express them and act accordingly. If any of this seems strange,
feel free to contact me via my hecker@d.o email address. I am
more than willing to entertain questions and provide more
details.
My explanations may not always make sense, but I am willing to
share my thoughts. My priority at the moment is to find my next
job. A big chunk of my spare time will involve Debian. If I
can identify specific areas or tasks where I can help, that is
where I will channel my efforts. I am not sure where to go from
here, but I hope to share details about my journey.

Looked at my last entry and it is hard to believe so much time has passed. Debian is now lead by Martin Michlmayr. I was fortunate enough to have him spend the night at my house last year when he was in our area. I think he has the potential to be a great DPL. That last entry was in a semester which almost burned me out. I started to back off after that and my Fall 2003 semester was the best yet. I hope this semester turns out as good. I have my doubts though. I have an Electromagnetics instructor who seems to be using our class as his guinea pigs for a book he is writing. I hope my impression is wrong, because I do not feel like spending a semester proof reading for a non-native english instructor.

A little quicker update this time. The fall semester has begun and and I think I nailed the last quiz in my Statics class. My brain seems to be coming back online. I got an invitation to join the Golden Key Honour Society at CSUN and they look legit. I went to a dinner meeting last night with Debian developers to strengthen the web-of-trust. We met because the DPL (Bdale Garbee) was in town. He seems to be a very interesting guy. I was impressed and thoroughly enjoyed the evening. I need to get out for more social events like this. I saw that the LA Slashdot MEETUP was also held last night. I still have not attended one of them. Dan Kegel sat one seat away from me and I never knew who he was. I was the last one to show up so I missed all the introductions and early conversations. I would have loved to tell Dan how useful his web site was when I was doing my ISDN research. I also met Michael Elkins who developed mutt. He mentioned the Scripting Languages article here which explains my visit today. I have lots of homework to do today so I better finish this key signing tangent and crack the books.

Well, here is another snapshot. I think I got passing grades in all my classes last semester. The Linear Systems class was the toughest. It was over a decade ago when I took Differential Equations and the old brain has gone soft in the meantime. I simplified things by selling the rental so I have a little more spare time. I joined the GIMPS project to make uses of my spare cpu cycles. It has captivated my interest and my wife would probably say I have wasted a lot of time on it. I burned up the power supply on my AMD K6-III 450 box so that caused some adjustments. I was surprised when Malice gave me permission to build a new system. I bought a Tyan Tiger MP S2460 motherboard from NewEgg and slapped two 1.2 GHz Athlons in it. It really screams! I thought my ECS D6VAA project last year would be more than adequate with the two Pentium III 1.0 GHz Coppermine cpus. This new Athlon kicks butt on the GIMPS algorithm. It is 2-3 times faster than those 1.0 GHz Pentium chips. It has been an eternity since I added anything to my homepage, but I am tempted to add a log of this rebuild project.

Time is flying by this year. I found some job opportunities this week and hopefully I will hear an encouraging
response. I read the Samba thread today and it looks like a number of people in the OSS community are feeling
the pain. The 4_1_99_5 tag of XFree86 compiled without a hitch yesterday. I need to get some painting done on
my rental today, so it will probably be the weekend before I get some debugging time on my MediaGX box.

Wow, 2002 already. A lot of changes are coming with this new year. I need to find a new job before
all the money
runs out. I finally have the time to work on those projects I have been neglecting. I still have some gpg keys that I
intended to sign. I have not used Advogato before but this seems like a good time to try it out.

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